One of Tanya’s eyebrows arched. “Really? And just what might that be?”
“It’s a long story,” Jodi said uncomfortably, suddenly wondering why she had come here. More and more, she felt as if she were in a trap. The words suddenly came to her: Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly…
“Well, dear,” Tanya said, casually examining one of her perfectly manicured blood-red nails, “I have plenty of time.”
Jodi bit her lip. “Please, Tanya. I have nowhere else to turn, no one else to go to. There’s a lot riding on this, a lot more than just my life. There’s something terribly wrong in the Confederation government. I think I know who murdered the president, but it wasn’t Reza Gard.”
“Well,” Tanya said, looking up from her nails to pin Jodi with her gaze, “I’m sure President Borge would be happy to hear about it.”
Jodi felt her black skin go pale as the blood drained from it. “President Borge,” she whispered. She closed her eyes. She was too late. “Dear, sweet Jesus.”
She felt a cool hand against her face. “Jodi,” Tanya asked with what almost sounded like genuine concern in her voice, “are you all right?”
“No,” Jodi choked. “The Confederation’s fucked. We’re all fucked, now that that bastard has gotten what he wanted.”
“Tell me,” Tanya said softly, “why do you say that? Borge has been a friend of our family for many years. I know him quite well.”
Somehow, that did not surprise Jodi. Their personalities seemed to go hand in hand. God, she thought, what do I do? She had no choice but to tell her. “I think Borge had President Nathan murdered, and I think I know who he used as an assassin.” And then she began to tell Tanya about her time at the research center, about Borge and Thorella, and all that she had learned there.
When she finished, Tanya was quiet for a long time, looking out the window at the dawn sky. She was a night person, Jodi remembered, forsaking the light of the sun for the moon and stars. Like a vampire.
When she finally spoke, Jodi almost didn’t recognize her voice: it was wooden, dead.
“I knew Markus Thorella,” Tanya said. “Our parents were very good friends, actually. I had always liked Markus.” She smiled bitterly. “He was everything a young girl could have wanted in a boy. I remember the accident, too, how horrible it was. I used to visit him in the hospital every Tuesday, when my parents would let me fly over to visit him. But when he finally woke up, he had… changed. He was quiet, sullen. Arrogant. But I didn’t let that stop me. He had been through a lot. I would not abandon him. We were friends.”
She stopped talking, her words drifting into the silent void that the room had become. Jodi felt her skin crawling at Tanya’s revelation. The picture of Borge’s evil, horrible as it was, was becoming ever clearer.
A single tear slid down Tanya’s cheek, glistening in the morning light. “I kept seeing him even after he left the hospital,” she went on, more softly now. “That’s when I first met Senator Borge. He seemed like such a nice man. Much like Markus’s father had been. I spent a great deal of time with them. That’s why Mama and Papa bought me this cottage. Just so I could be closer to them. To him. My friend, Markus.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “The friend who raped me when I was fifteen.” She smiled then, an evil, hateful smile that floated on a sea of anguish and pain. “But who could I tell? Who would believe me? That Markus Thorella had raped his best friend? No one would have believed it. I was no saint, even as a child, but Markus was. Had been.” She shook her head. “I said nothing, because I still thought he might… love me. But my body was all he wanted, and he took it whenever and however it pleased him. He made me do things, terrible things. And when he was old enough to enroll in the academy, he left without a word. He tossed me aside like rubbish. And now you’re telling me… that it was not even him.”
Jodi was now beginning to understand her own past. In her anger and self-loathing, Tanya had taken out on everyone else the love/hate she had felt for Markus Thorella. He had warped her, had emotionally and physically raped her, and she was trying to purge herself of the demons he had left inside her. And there had been no one for her to confide in, no one who would believe her accusations because of the legacy of the real Markus Thorella, whose word had once been honorable and true. She had never told anyone what had happened until this day. Jodi had been one of her victims, and doubtless there had been many more, some probably not as lucky as Jodi had been. But the greatest victim of all had been Tanya herself.
“I will help you,” Tanya said quietly after the tears had passed. “Tell me what you need.”
“Pray to your God that I never rise from this table, doctor.” For the hundredth time, Reza tried to free himself from the restraints that held him firmly to the cold stainless steel operating table. But as his determination crossed a magic threshold, he lost his strength, his will. He sagged back before the power of the restraints, exhausted. The electrodes pressed into his skull tingled as his head thumped gently against the table. He felt like Samson after losing his hair to Delilah’s hand; he could call upon neither his psychic nor his physical powers to extricate himself from his bonds.
“This is my god,” she replied as she worked the set of consoles that encircled him like hungry, flesh-craving electronic gargoyles. She shook her head in wonder at the data pouring from her instruments. “What a magnificent specimen you are.” She turned to him and smiled. “We’re going to become very close, you and I. Closer than you can possibly imagine.”
Reza closed his eyes and tried to concentrate, but he could not channel his power. Normally, he could have simply willed himself to be somewhere else, and he would be gone. But she had done something to him, something that interfered with his most basic neural processes. He was helpless before her, and the only thing greater than his anger was his shame. He could not even commit suicide.
“I was going to do to you what I had originally suggested when you returned from the Empire,” she explained, “to give you a deep-core probe. But I’m glad that things turned out differently. That would have been such a waste.
“You see, I’ve always hoped for an opportunity like this, and I’ve planned for it all these years. A deep-core, of course, depends on the external analysts being able to interpret the data that comes from the target brain. That means you need people who know the language, the culture, and who can understand the imagery that the target brain is projecting. We never recover everything, of course, but under ideal circumstances, we can successfully interpret up to thirty or even forty percent of the core data.”
“And this is all you get for the price of the victim’s sanity?”
“It’s a small enough price,” she said confidently. He felt her hands adjusting something on his head, almost as if she were checking the ripeness of a melon. A throb filled his skull, like a noise so low in pitch that it could not really be heard, but only felt. “But I’ve done better since then. Much better.
“Now,” she explained, “instead of a gaggle of analysts struggling to understand the massive output of even the most diseased and atrophied brain, I can actually link my own cortex into the data stream as an on-line interpreter, drastically improving the recovery rate, bringing it up to nearly one-hundred percent. In effect, I will know everything you know, will feel everything that you feel. And these computers will record it all for later study in a format any qualified analyst can understand.” He saw her face above his, looking down at him with eyes bright with anticipation. She wore a tiara of cerebral implants. “You’re looking at the one person in the Universe who in a few minutes will know more about you than any other.”